by Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY

by Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY

Federal securities regulators Friday obtained an emergency court order freezing assets in a Switzerland-based trading account that was used to generate more than $1.7 million in "highly suspicious" trading before the surprise acquisition deal for food giant H.J. Heinz.

The order came in response to a Securities and Exchange Commission court complaint that targeted as-yet unidentified "foreign traders or traders trading through foreign accounts" who allegedly had illegal inside information about the $28 billion purchase announced Thursday by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital.

The suspects, whose account had no prior history of trading in Heinz shares, purchased 2,533 call options on the company's stock one day before the acquisition announcement, the SEC said in the legal action. Those call options would give the buyer the right to buy 100 Heinz shares for $65 per share until June 22.

The trading purchase was unusual, the SEC complaint said, because only 14 June $65 calls were purchased on Feb. 12 and none were bought the day before.

Formal public announcement of the Heinz deal caused the June $65 calls to surge over 1,700%, making the suspects' initial investment of nearly $90,000 worth more than $1.7 million, the SEC alleged.

"Irregular and highly suspicious options trading immediately in front of a merger or acquisition announcement is a serious red flag that traders may be improperly acting on confidential nonpublic information," said Daniel Hawke, chief of the SEC enforcement division's market abuse unit.

The emergency order freezes the suspected traders' assets in the Zurich account, identified in the court complaint as GS Bank IC Buy Open List Options GS & Co, and prohibits them from destroying evidence.